The Hunter becomes the Haunted

What's eating Fernando Alonso? STEVE COOPER gets inside the mind of a champion

When Fernando Alonso marched into the Monza paddock on race morning in September 2006, he was already the people's champion. Wronged and victimised, the guileless Spaniard bravely stood his ground, speaking out about the Formula 1 machine he felt was trying to crush his destiny - and his honesty and humility earned him huge respect from both the F1 community and the world at large.

When he walks into the famous Autodromo Nazionale this week, he'll be scrutinised as a flawed and compromised figure; a man who still wears his heart on his sleeve but who has been criticised for his unsporting behaviour and miserable demeanour.

So has the hero really become the anti-hero in the space of just one year? No. And it would be inaccurate to paint him with such broad, ill-defined brush strokes. But Alonso is definitely weathering a sea change of opinion - and will almost certainly end this season as a very different public figure from the one who started it. This, then, is an analysis of the man's state of mind and the journey that got him there.

The Reluctant Leader

Those who've worked with Fernando agree that despite his charisma and natural ability, he's not a natural leader. Too shy, awkward and defensive to ever share the same forcefulness as Michael Schumacher, Alonso's leadership qualities are less tangible - easier to define, perhaps, but harder to observe.

He leads a team through his sheer raw speed and supreme technical ability. "Fernando is the kind of guy who very quickly motivates the mechanics and engineers," says former Minardi boss Paul Stoddart, who introduced Alonso to F1 in 2001. "The whole team realises this kid is special, focused and dedicated to his racing. There's not much of another side to him. Yes, he can be a prankster - there were birthday parties when cakes went in the air and so on - but he is incredibly focused. And any team will react to that."

Mike Gascoyne, who oversaw Alonso's transformation into a world-class driver at Renault in 2003, agrees. "I remember his first test for Renault," he says. "Before he got in the car, he was out the back of the paddock kicking a football around. He looked like he didn't have a care in the world, and you wondered whether he took it seriously enough.

"Then he got in the car and he was absolutely unbelievable. He was incredibly quick and gave good feedback. Five minutes after he'd jumped out of the car, he'd be kicking a football again! Once we were ready again - bang! He'd be straight on it.

"There are some guys who drive fast enough and get results they shouldn't really get - and they are the guys the mechanics quickly learn to respect."

Heikki Kovalainen, who worked with Alonso as a tester at Renault last year, adds: "He's got a clear goal every time he's driving. And he's very clever; he sets up the car and manages the race. He gives clear instructions to the team. He's very switched on; very much a leader in that respect."

In many ways, Alonso operates in the same mould as Ayrton Senna - another driver with colossal self-belief but somebody wary of outsiders who found it difficult to trust anyone. Initially, Senna earned respect through his natural talent but, like Alonso, became less reserved as he blossomed and matured as a world champion.

Figures close to him concur that Alonso still remains an intensely private individual, somebody who would rather whisper than shout in order to get his point across. And that makes it harder to understand his recent outspokenness - perhaps it shows us a figure under considerably greater pressure than we'd previously imagined. His almost daily statements in Turkey were perhaps symptomatic of a man who has either tired of a whispering campaign, or who finally needs to shout to get his message heard.

An Environmental Creature

Perhaps his need to shout simply comes from his greater isolation within McLaren. Alonso has spoken privately of his distrust for McLaren's senior management and this edginess has made any intra-team relationships brittle and difficult to foster. At Renault, he was respected and loved; he opened up to them and they, in return, gave him everything.

The Renault-era Alonso is almost a different man from the haunted figure who prowls the paddock in his silver uniform. Remember the reckless camaraderie at Renault, the comedy moustaches worn by his crew, the facial fuzz taped onto pictures, the image of a bearded Alonso Photoshopped onto a poster of Captain Jack Sparrow in the Shanghai paddock last year? It all spoke of the trust between individual and organisation. And it's all gone this year.

McLaren team boss Ron Dennis has always said that McLaren's reputation as a cold and grey team is a misconception - that it's far warmer and cuddlier from the inside looking out than from the outside looking in. Maybe, but it's still a far cooler environment than most Latin drivers require in which to thrive - just ask Juan Pablo Montoya.

"Maybe Fernando didn't appreciate just how different, and important, the change of environment would be," mused one of Alonso's associates, clearly acknowledging the difficulties he faces at McLaren, particularly as team-mate Lewis Hamilton already has his feet comfortably under the table. It will have added to that sense of isolation.

Self Control

Like all racing drivers, Alonso's self-belief is unwavering. Possessed of a singular, feisty determination and a precisely defined set of values, his principles have occasionally broken through to the surface whenever he has been forced to vent his displeasure at a situation.

Remember Monza last year, when his three fastest lap times were annulled by race stewards after he 'blocked' Felipe Massa? Alonso was quick to condemn the action, helming a soul-searching press conference in the Renault motorhome on the morning of the race where his honesty and integrity earned him a groundswell of support in the paddock.

Tellingly, however, that simmering resentment at the injustice of it all was the closest he came to losing his cool. His self-belief is married to an equally resolute self-confidence, which means that Alonso's explosive moments are rarely seen in public.

One Alonso confidant stopped short of labelling him a 'clever' driver. "He's not intellectually clever," they said. "But he's animalistically clever - he knows how to handle the pressure and how to do his job."

Just look at his reaction to the qualifying debacle in Budapest last month. While Hamilton made it clear that he had been wronged and McLaren frothed and fretted over the matter for the remainder of the afternoon, Alonso sat back, bit his tongue and let things slowly unravel.

"It didn't get to him or affect him," notes Gascoyne.

"That five-place penalty really screwed him but he was totally calm about it. He didn't throw his toys out of the pram - he must have thought, 'I can't do anything about it; Lewis is on pole; he's won the race, but... I got him rattled.' And after the race, you didn't get the impression that he was ranting and raving about it at all."

Kovalainen agrees: "I don't think he really loses his temper - sometimes he raises his fist in the cockpit, but he stays in control. And he normally doesn't make mistakes and puts in 100 per cent effort from the start of the race to the end."

Individual Vision

He knows how to control that confidence for political means too. Principles may be valuable, but Alonso realises that it's sometimes better to stay guarded and use subterfuge and manipulation to gain an on-track advantage.

In Shanghai last year, he quietly complained that he felt 'alone' within the Renault operation, that he was attempting to win the world championship on his own. It was a canny political move. With the Japanese Grand Prix just a week later, Fernando surely knew that his carefully chosen words would have the desired effect. Sure enough, the media spun his complaint into something more significant by the time the circus reached Suzuka.

In Thursday's press conference, Alonso was asked if he'd meant what he said. "Yes," he replied. "I felt that I should have had more help from the team - their main priority is to win the constructors' championship."

It was a well-placed barb but showed that, not only was he willing to speak his mind, but he wasn't worried about retracting, refuting or rephrasing a particularly troublesome soundbite if it risked causing him trouble. The episode spoke volumes for a man unafraid to speak his mind - whatever the consequences.

That's why he was happy to reiterate sentiments made about McLaren when he was phoned by a Spanish radio station shortly after the Canadian Grand Prix. "Right from the start, I've never felt totally comfortable at McLaren," he told the DJ. "We know that all the support and help is going to Lewis and I understood that from the beginning."

Immediately, McLaren attempted to defuse the situation but when he was grilled on the nature of his comments in Indianapolis, he remained unrepentant, explaining: "I never said anything against the team. What I said was that I was not totally comfortable. There are things missing that I've talked to them about, and I think they are necessary to make me comfortable."

The Politicisation of the Man

But while Alonso has shown a steely state of mind in his political arguments with his team and the FIA, these incidents have also shown his exasperation at the conflict that dogs the sport. In Monza last September, he memorably stated: "I don't consider F1 anymore a sport," as he tried to come to terms with his grid penalty. And you knew he meant it, too. It's in this area that the shy, humble man from Oviedo faces his most difficult interface with F1 - because it's the one area that he cannot fully conquer.

"When politics gets in the middle of things, Fernando will find it really difficult to deal with," says Stoddart. "He's got an abundance of strength and mental ability but what will screw him up is politics. He is a 100 per cent racer who doesn't care about politics and doesn't want to. Look at what happened last year with the mass damper affair and the Monza incident - all the travesties of justice that have been thrown at him. If people keep doing that, he'll hate it."

And this year has been even harder - not only has he been forced to fight and defend his world championship, but also counter an internal battle within the team itself, the very place where he expected to be defended from paddock politics. It's no wonder he often appears edgy and unhappy - the mess that he needs to escape from has followed him into the most private recesses of the team motorhome. There's literally no escaping politics for Fernando in 2007.

Where Next?

The very fact that Alonso has become such an angry young man - and changed so radically from the figure we thought we knew, and loved, at Renault - suggests that something, somewhere, has changed for him. Maybe, as he claims, he has been wronged by McLaren.

After all, Alonso is such a principled figure that he simply cannot subjugate his inner feelings - as we saw at Renault on the rare occasions that he felt wronged. Perhaps we've all misinterpreted his 'whingeing' at McLaren. Perhaps what we're witnessing is not an act of contrary defiance, but of principled self-belief. Perhaps this is a man who really has been let down by the McLaren organisation.

After all, a leopard doesn't change its spots - and it feels a little too odd that the people's champion could so quickly turn into the sport's anti-hero in just nine short months. There are hidden depths to Fernando Alonso, and his distrust and wariness meant that some areas within his McLaren relationship will always remain hidden.

Stoddart feels it's this endless politicking that could finally push Alonso out of the sport. "Fernando's strong enough to just push people away and say, 'I don't want to know.' But it's quite another thing to start pushing him down the grid and taking points off him. That, ultimately, is what could push him out of F1."